Larkspur

William Morris

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Morris designed forty-one wallpapers and five ceiling papers, working from 1862 with Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company and from 1875 with Morris & Company. First produced in 1875, "Larkspur" began as a monochrome (single color) foliate design elaborated with flowers. In this example, yellow was printed over white, but the pattern was also available in light blue, gray or brick red. When "Larkspur" proved popular, variations were developed–in one example, blue and pink blossoms appear with leaves in two tones of green.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art